


Accept the Gift

by ideserveyou



Category: Arthur of the Britons
Genre: First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 15:35:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideserveyou/pseuds/ideserveyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kai is back from returning the Saxon orphans to their village; Arthur is giving him some first-aid</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accept the Gift

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the canon episode 'The Gift of Life'. Thanks once again to trepkos for yet another searingly effective beta-reading job!

| ‘And they gave me… a gift of life.’  
  
  
I prop myself on my elbow, watching Arthur’s face. But he seems to care little for the Saxons’ gift. He sits brooding, staring into the fire.  
  
‘Arthur.’ I shift position on the bed, trying to ease the dull ache of the axe-wound in my side. It was a long, hard ride through the night, and my head still feels light from the loss of blood. ‘Do you wish… that I were other than what I am?’  
  
I regret the question as soon as it leaves my lips. I should ask no more of Arthur tonight. He’s taut as a drawn bow; Llud is from home, and Arthur would entrust the tending of my ragged, clotted wound to no-one but himself.  
  
He looks at me now, without really seeing me. ‘What makes you think that? You know your Saxon birth makes no difference. Not to me.’  
  
‘But it did. It did make a difference. It made you choose me, to take the children home. It meant…’ I take a deep breath. ‘It meant that you had to put me in danger. Made you afraid for me. Made you think I might not return, and that my staying might be from choice.’  
  
‘I could not have judged you on that choice, had you made it. I have never seen the Saxons as you did yesterday, offering welcome – never been among them as a friend. As one of them…’ He sighs heavily.  
  
‘Perhaps you will, one day. When your vision comes true.’  
  
‘Celt and Saxon side by side?’  
  
‘Stranger things have happened.’ I hold his gaze with mine. ‘After all, you and I are here.’  
  
‘That’s true.’ He crosses to the bed, sits down carefully beside me and fidgets with my grubby bandage, yet again. ‘I didn’t do a very good job here, did I?’  
  
‘Llud will put it right tomorrow.’ I take his hand; lift it away from my sore chest. ‘You did what was needful. I’ll be fine.’  
  
Arthur gives a shaky laugh. ‘You may be no good with children, Kai, but it was clever thinking to make such stout allies of them. They gave  _me_  a gift, did they but know it.’  
  
I link my fingers through his. ‘I did think about how it would be, to stay there,’ I admit. ‘There was a girl…’  
  
He rolls his eyes. ‘A pretty one?’  
  
‘Of course. And it was good to hear the old songs again, and taste wheaten bread, and look around me and see yellow hair and faces and features like my own. But that was not enough to make it feel like home.’  
  
‘No?’ Arthur’s face brightens, just a little.  
  
I shake my head, wincing at the pain in my ribs. ‘Even had I gone there in honest friendship, still all the Saxons in the world would not be enough to make up for one Celt.’ I grip Arthur’s hand tight. ‘This one.’  
  
‘Truly?’ he whispers, looking into my eyes as though he can’t believe what he’s seeing there.  
  
‘I swear it. I swear on the life given me by the Saxon council. This is where my home is, Arthur – where you are.’  
  
His eyes are wide with hope. ‘You mean…’   
  
I try to keep my face straight. My little brother is so slow where affairs of the heart are concerned. ‘I do mean that, yes.’  
  
He bites his lip. ‘But you never said anything, before.’  
  
‘I was afraid to. It would have… changed things. You might not have welcomed it – might have sent me away.’  
  
‘I did send you away.’  
  
‘Only with good reason. And I had a lot of time to think, on the way back. Had the blade gone deeper, it would have given me death, and no chance to say to you what was in my heart. I will not take that chance again.’  
  
‘Nor will I send you from my side again.’  
  
He leans over, and kisses my mouth, hesitantly, as though he’s never done this before; as perhaps he hasn’t.  
  
I wind my hands into his hair, and pull him closer; kiss him hard, licking at his lips until they part a little and let me in.  
  
We are both breathing heavily as we break apart again. I reach for Arthur’s hand, to guide it under my cloak, but he shakes his head. ‘We can’t do this, you’re hurt.’  
  
‘Yes, we can. If we’re careful. I don’t want to waste another chance.’  
  
I lean back against the pillows. The heavy chain of my cloak-fastening catches at my throat. Arthur undoes the clasp and lifts the fur-trimmed fabric aside, exposing my neck and my shoulders. He strokes me, delicately, making me shiver; making me hard.  
  
‘More,’ I urge him. ‘Uncover me, I want you to look at me.’  
  
He stripped me, this morning, after he’d half-carried me into the longhouse and snarled at everyone else to leave us be; but I know that he only really saw my injuries. And I want him to see all of me; to see the effect he’s having on me, although he’s barely touched me yet.  
  
We glance downwards at the same time, to where my aching prick is pushing up the cloak into a peak, a mountain with a pillar of fire at its heart.  
  
‘Please.’ I watch his hand as he settles it there, and now I am gasping, and not just with the pain in my side.  
  
‘I am hurting you.’  
  
‘You are  _not_.’ I thrust upwards, against his palm. ‘See? If you were hurting me,  _this_  wouldn’t be happening.’  
  
He pushes downwards, cautiously. ‘Is that…?’ He looks at his hand, resting on my groin; then he looks up at me, all his defences gone. ‘Kai, you’ll have to help me here, I know so little of… all this… and please don’t laugh.’  
  
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ And anyway, I can’t at the moment – that  _would_  hurt. ‘Trust me, what you’re doing is… very nice. Just imagine you’re doing it to yourself. You do – you know – touch yourself, don’t you?’  
  
‘Of course I do.’ He looks briefly indignant.  
  
I thrust up against his hand again. ‘Good. So touch me, the same way. And when you’re ready for more – ’  
  
‘Oh, I’m ready for more, believe me.’  
  
‘Uncover me, then.’ I grin at him. ‘Always best to know your adversary.’  
  
‘If you say so.’ He pulls aside the cloak, and catches his breath, and for a moment or two he just looks, devouring me with his eyes, before he wraps his hand around my straining cock.  
  
It feels so good; ye gods, I never imagined…  
  
A few tentative strokes, and the pain in my ribs is but a distant whisper, drowned out by the triumphant roaring of my heart.  
  
Arthur puts his free hand on my belly, careful not to disturb the bandage, stroking and caressing me, working his way down into my groin to lift my balls and weigh them in his hand, exploring the tender skin behind them, making me whimper.  
  
‘Did that hurt?’  
  
‘No,’ I gasp. ‘No, and no, and no again. Don’t stop. Please…’  
  
He’s smiling now; he leans over and kisses me again, confidently this time.  
  
Then leans over the other way and does the same to my prick.  
  
Now that, I hadn’t expected.  
  
It undoes me completely.  
  
There’s just time for me to groan some sort of incoherent warning, and for him to draw back a little, before I am spilling myself into his hands and onto my stomach and who knows where else besides…  
  
I shut my eyes for a little while, the pain of my wound returning sharply as I pant for breath.  
  
‘Kai.’ Arthur is kissing my brow; wiping me clean with a damp cloth, cool on my heated skin. ‘I’m sorry, my heart.’  
  
I force my eyes open, and grin at him. ‘I’m not.’  
  
‘But I made it worse.’ He’s biting his lip again.  
  
‘No, you didn’t. You made it all better. Now come to bed and I’ll show you how we can make it better still.’  
  
Arthur hesitates only a moment before shedding his clothes and crawling into bed beside me as though he had done so every night of his life, and in the glow of the embers we kiss and laugh and feed each other grapes until they are all gone.  
  
  
Llud is a little surprised to find the longhouse door barred against him in the morning; but he says, as he re-binds my wound, that when your son has been given the gift of life, and joy as well into the bargain, you do not question exactly how.  
  
You just accept the gift.  
---


End file.
